Sharp exchanges on income inequality, debates over the best educational road map to good jobs and a push for businesses to invest in low-income communities have dominated the Clinton Global Initiative America conference this week in Denver.

Tuesday brought the heaviest schedule of the three-day conference at the downtown Sheraton, along with a slew of big-money commitments announced by multinational corporations, nonprofits and government officials to build communities, invest in projects and train workers. Discussions and some debates focused on raising the minimum wage, prospects for economic justice, faltering upward mobility in America, the need for more job-training programs and preparing youngsters for an evolving workforce.

And all of it occurred against the unmistakable backdrop of the former secretary of state’s political future.

Early in the day, NBC’s David Gregory crystallized the juxtaposition when he asked former President Bill Clinton about blowback over his wife’s recent comment describing the couple, saddled with legal debt when they left the White House in 2001, as “dead broke.”

Republican critics, noting that both Clintons now make big money on the speaking circuit and live quite well, dutifully seized on the comment to suggest a disregard for what it truly means to be poor.

Bill Clinton said it wasn’t for him to decide if that was fair, but he defended Hillary’s record on behalf of working people.

“The problem is somebody’s always trying to change the subject,” Clinton said during the one-on-one chat with Gregory, part of an onstage taping of “Meet the Press.” “The subject is how can we get this economy going, and how can we get it to work?”

In the afternoon, Hillary Clinton opened a session on education and workforce development by saying youth unemployment is a U.S. crisis, one economists predict could cost more than $20 billion in lost earnings in the next decade.

“Six years after financial crash, many young people are still struggling,” Hillary Clinton said. “In fact, one of the most terrifying statistics is that nearly 6 million young Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 are out of school and out of work.”

A political analyst cautioned that Clinton’s focus on specific issues during the conference offers few clues about her presidential intentions.

Lynn Vavreck, a political science professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, said income inequality is becoming a key issue globally and will be part of any campaign for president — no matter who runs.

“The problem is that because she’s running what I’m calling this ‘pseudo campaign,’ instead of a real campaign, she is actually, on purpose, not talking very much about what life would be like for people under a Hillary Clinton administration,” Vavrek said.

“In the absence of that, we end up talking about not whether her tax policies would help the middle class but whether her own conception of herself as being not truly well off will make it impossible for her to relate to the middle class.”

Between Hillary Clinton’s visit to Denver earlier this month and the conference, Colorado — seen as a swing state — has gotten a lot of attention from the Clintons.

That’s not lost on Republicans, with a national party spokesman responding to a question about the messages coming from the conference by shifting into campaign mode.

“The American people are ready for a new direction,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short, “but it’s clear Hillary Clinton only wants to continue the same failed policies we’ve seen from the Obama administration, which have left the middle class less well off and Washington in more control of their lives.”

It has drawn more than 1,000 attendees, among them big-city mayors, current and former government officials, business executives, nonprofit leaders and a healthy crowd of Clinton loyalists.

Not everyone, however, was in lock step.

During a panel discussion that was part of the “Meet the Press” taping, Bill Clinton and Republican Carly Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard chairwoman and CEO, tangled over whether to raise the minimum wage and the proper role of government in the economy.

But the conference featured plenty of Democratic kinship. At a noon news conference, Bill Clinton stood shoulder to shoulder at a lectern with several big union leaders, including the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers. They announced that the unions had achieved their 2011 pledge to raise $10 billion from workers’ retirement funds to invest in infrastructure projects, which would create construction jobs.

During an interview with The Denver Post on Monday, Bill Clinton said the conference’s emphasis on economic justice and education was in step with the times, and Denver’s track record of innovative solutions made it an attractive host city.

“What we’re trying to do is to focus on both creating employment opportunities and more broadly shared prosperity,” he said.

“There’s too much economic inequality in America and around the world, and it translates into too little economic opportunity.”

But as an economist pointed out, the problem of rising inequality is complex and not easy to disentangle.

“Politicians of all stripes will try to exploit that issue and take positions,” said Mohammed Akacem, an economics professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

“But I don’t think they can promise a solution that will work as implied. There is no magic answer.”

CGI conversations: Bloomberg TV and MSNBC will host sessions on America’s competitiveness in the world and managing natural resources, respectively. Former president Bill Clinton will participate in a “closing conversation” during the Bloomberg event.

Working groups: Smaller discussions will resume discussions on solutions to issues, including STEM education, infrastructure, sustainable buildings and financial opportunity.

Major pledges made Tuesday

The Clinton Global Initiative America goes beyond parsing social and economic problems into commitments by corporations and nonprofits to fix them.

During the first day of the meeting held in Denver, major new projects and recommitments were announced:

Early-childhood education

The American Academy of Pediatrics this month will publish its first clinical policy statement identifying early literacy as a critical element of well-child doctor visits. The doctors will get help from Scholastic, Reach Out and Read, and Too Small to Fail, committing to provide 500,000 age-, culture- and developmentally appropriate books to patients at more than 5,000 sites nationwide.

STEM education

The Maker Education Initiative and its partners — including Google, Congnizant Technology Solutions Corp., Radio Shack and Intel — committed to expanding a program that seeks to spark interest in science, technology, engineering and math education by providing youth-serving organizations with interactive support, including college-age mentors. Maker Education director Lisa Regalla said in its first year, the program provided STEM mentorship to 90,000 families nationwide and expects to expand to 140,000 by September.

Community redevelopment

The Calvert Foundation pledged $30 million through “Ours to Own,” a peer-to-peer lending program designed to boost small-business and neighborhood revitalization investment in five cities, including Denver. Denver Urban Land Conservancy is Calvert’s partner in the program, which also seeks to cultivate citizen investors.

Sharing expertise

Since 2011, Toyota has shared its manufacturing process protocols with nonprofits and small- to mid-size manufacturers. This year, it will expand the commitment to reach to 47 groups, up from 27. Jamie Bonini, who leads the Toyota Production System Support Center in Erlanger, Ky., said in its first year, the program was used by the Food Bank for New York City to cut its delivery times by half and by the American Red Cross to reduce the length of emergency volunteer training by 90 percent. Businesses, including Intertech Plastics in northeast Denver, used Toyota’s system to improve processes to “protect jobs and strengthen the local economy.”

Employment training

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a string of job-training initiatives focused on young people that she called “job one.” These include a pledge by JPMorgan Chase to create 4,000 summer jobs in 14 cities and work-readiness training for an additional 20,000; $2 million from Symantec Corp. to recruit at least 45 underserved young adults for training in jobs in the cybersecurity sector; and a National Center for Women in Information and Technology STEM mentorship program, which hopes to reach 10,000 middle school girls by 2018.

Jon Murray is The Denver Post's city hall reporter. His coverage focuses on Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, the workings of the City Council and city's government interactions with Denver's people, from neighborhood issues to regulation of the marijuana industry. A Colorado native, he joined The Denver Post in 2014 after reporting on city government and the legal system for The Indianapolis Star.

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